Spoken Dialog Challenge 2010: Comparison of live and control test results

The Spoken Dialog Challenge 2010 was an exercise to investigate how different spoken dialog systems perform on the same task. The existing Let's Go Pittsburgh Bus Information System was used as a task and four teams provided systems that were first tested in controlled conditions with speech researchers as users. The three most stable systems were then deployed to real callers. This paper presents the results of the live tests, and compares them with the control test results. Results show considerable variation both between systems and between the control and live tests. Interestingly, relatively high task completion for controlled tests did not always predict relatively high task completion for live tests. Moreover, even though the systems were quite different in their designs, we saw very similar correlations between word error rate and task completion for all the systems. The dialog data collected is available to the research community. © 2011 Association for Computational Linguistics.

Stiffness of sands through a laboratory test database

Deformations of sandy soils around geotechnical structures generally involve strains in the range small (0·01%) to medium (0·5%). In this strain range the soil exhibits non-linear stress-strain behaviour, which should be incorporated in any deformation analysis. In order to capture the possible variability in the non-linear behaviour of various sands, a database was constructed including the secant shear modulus degradation curves of 454 tests from the literature. By obtaining a unique S-shaped curve of shear modulus degradation, a modified hyperbolic relationship was fitted. The three curve-fitting parameters are: an elastic threshold strain γe, up to which the elastic shear modulus is effectively constant at G0; a reference strain γr, defined as the shear strain at which the secant modulus has reduced to 0·5G0; and a curvature parameter a, which controls the rate of modulus reduction. The two characteristic strains γe and γr were found to vary with sand type (i.e. uniformity coefficient), soil state (i.e. void ratio, relative density) and mean effective stress. The new empirical expression for shear modulus reduction G/G0 is shown to make predictions that are accurate within a factor of 1·13 for one standard deviation of random error, as determined from 3860 data points. The initial elastic shear modulus, G0, should always be measured if possible, but a new empirical relation is shown to provide estimates within a factor of 1·6 for one standard deviation of random error, as determined from 379 tests. The new expressions for non-linear deformation are easy to apply in practice, and should be useful in the analysis of geotechnical structures under static loading.

A policy dimension required for technology roadmapping: Learning from the emergence of Chinese wind turbine industry

Innovation policies play an important role throughout the development process of emerging industries in China. Existing policy and industry studies view the emergence process as a black-box, and fail to understand the impacts of policy to the process along which it varies. This paper aims to develop a multi-dimensional roadmapping tool to better analyse the dynamics between policy and industrial growth for new industries in China. Through reviewing the emergence process of Chinese wind turbine industry, this paper elaborates how policy and other factors influence the emergence of this industry along this path. Further, this paper generalises some Chinese specifics for the policy-industry dynamics. As a practical output, this study proposes a roadmapping framework that generalises some patterns of policy-industry interactions for the emergence process of new industries in China. This paper will be of interest to policy makers, strategists, investors and industrial experts. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

How should governments support the emergence of new industries in leading economies?

Over the past 30 years, developed economies' approaches to supporting growth have focused on competitiveness, entrepreneurship and innovation to varying degrees. However, following the credit crisis and global recession in 2008 there has been demand for an updated narrative of growth based on the emergence of new industries. This paper provides a brief review of the available literature on how governments in leading economies can support new industries to emerge to the benefit of their national economy, discusses a number of issues for governments trying to support emerging industries, provides a framework of activities which governments considering this type of intervention should consider, and discusses the case of the regenerative medicine industry in the UK using the framework. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Understanding and navigating industrial emergence

Industrial emergence is a broad and complex domain, with relevant perspectives ranging in scale from the individual entrepreneur and firm with the business decisions and actions they make to the policies of nations and global patterns of industrialisation. The research described in this article has adopted a holistic approach, based on structured mapping methods, in an attempt to depict and understand the dynamics and patterns of industrial emergence across a broad spectrum from early scientific discovery to large-scale industrialisation. The breadth of scope and application has enabled a framework and set of four tools to be developed that have wide applicability. The utility of the approaches has been demonstrated through case studies and trials in a diverse range of industrial contexts. The adoption of such a broad scope also presents substantial challenges and limitations, with these providing an opportunity for further research. © IMechE 2013.

Identification of the steering control behaviour of five test subjects following a randomly curving path in a driving simulator

The paper is concerned with the identification of theoretical preview steering controllers using data obtained from five test subjects in a fixed-base driving simulator. An understanding of human steering control behaviour is relevant to the design of autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicle controls. The driving task involved steering a linear vehicle along a randomly curving path. The theoretical steering controllers identified from the data were based on optimal linear preview control. A direct-identification method was used, and the steering controllers were identified so that the predicted steering angle matched as closely as possible the measured steering angle of the test subjects. It was found that identification of the driver's time delay and noise is necessary to avoid bias in identification of the controller parameters. Most subjects' steering behaviour was predicted well by a theoretical controller based on the lateral/yaw dynamics of the vehicle. There was some evidence that an inexperienced driver's steering action was better represented by a controller based on a simpler model of the vehicle dynamics, perhaps reflecting incomplete learning by the driver. Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.